When the Dead Can't Wait
by KADH
Summary: There comes a time when everyone must face that ghosts that haunt them and hold them back, for Sara – and Grissom – the time has finally come. Part of the Convergence Series. Follows “Admitting Impediments” and “Engaging Conversations.”
1. One

**When the Dead Can't Wait**

There comes a time when everyone must face that ghosts that haunt them and hold them back, for Sara – _and Grissom_ – the time has finally come.

_Part of the Time series. Follows "The Good Fight," "Closing Arguments," "Reconciliation," "Admitting Impediments" and "Engaging Conversations"_

_and takes places post season eight, circa__ February 200__9._

**One**

There was always just something about the hours when it was not quite dark, nor not quite light, that seemed to be good for confessions; something about the time when all the rest of the world seemed quiet and asleep that made it easier to speak of all the things one could not find the words to say in the harsh light of day.

Although that wasn't what Gil Grissom exactly had in mind when he passed Sara a cup of tea and told her without preamble, "I stopped by to see Jack Peters the other day."

She didn't even bother to look up from the newspaper she was reading as she replied, "And how is Jack these days?"

"Well, first, he threatened to have me thrown from the building before heartily shaking my hand and inviting me to have a seat. He then proceeded to accuse me of attempting to abscond with more of his staff."

"That sounds like the Jack I remember," Sara said with a slight laugh.

Grissom sat down beside her at the table, but didn't pick up the pen or the crossword puzzle page she had already laid out for him. "You aren't upset?" His question sounded as genuinely surprised as he was.

Sara shrugged her shoulders as she sipped her tea. "Why would I be upset?" She asked. "You have every right to go and see colleagues when you're in town."

"I didn't go to see him on official business."

Her eyes flicked up to meet his and held his gaze for a long, silent and increasingly tense moment as Grissom's words hung there between them before Sara simply returned her attention to the paper.

After a few more strained minutes, she stammered a little uneasily, "I didn't know you were in the habit of making social calls, _Gilbert_."

While he distinctly knew that the use of his first name in that particular way, typically signaled that he was perhaps more than just teetering a little too close to being on dangerous ground, Grissom continued gently, "He'd like to see you."

"You told him I was in town?" She asked, her tone slightly testy, in spite of her best attempts to keep it even.

"But not the reason."

She rattled the page a little more noisily than necessary as she turned it and said, "I suppose I should find that reassuring, I guess."

"He was worried about you."

Sara peered up at him and sighed, "And you went to see him because you were worried about me, too."

As that was the truth of it, Grissom merely nodded in reply.

"You I can understand, but why on earth would Jack feel the need to be worried, least of all about me?"

"He said you called to request a copy of your mother's file but that you never picked it up."

"No, I didn't."

"Why?"

_Why? _Sara's mind echoed almost in disbelief before she incredulously repeated the same word back at him, "_Why?_ Gil Grissom wants to know '_Why?_'" She slowly put the paper down and said, "Okay."

She took a long gulp of tea before beginning, "At first, it was mortification. I realized that I would have had to face Jack and I know Jack well enough to know that he would have looked through that file and I guess I didn't want to face his inevitable questions."

"About your family?"

"Yeah and what I was now doing in San Francisco instead of Vegas. Then I realized I couldn't just call and have him mail it, because then I would still have had to deal with the questions, just over the phone, which really wouldn't have made it any easier.

"But as time passed, I realized I didn't need to know what was in that file. That I already knew what I would find there.

"I mean it's just a case file -- autopsy results, photographs, sketches, interview notes and witness accounts, tox reports, weapon's data, data, data, data.

"And those things weren't what mattered to me. They weren't what I really wanted to know. What I _needed_ to know. It wasn't the _who_ or the _what_ or _when_ or _how_ that mattered -- even if I all I really knew or remembered was the bits and pieces that I sometimes still dream about."

Then the words began to flow as uncontrollably as the tears Sara tried to blink back, but came any way; the words Grissom knew better than to interrupt.

"No, it was _why_. I just wanted -- want -- to know _why_ -- to understand the _why_ of what happened -- to my mother -- to my father -- in the end, to me.

"Because the night my father..." She stumbled slightly over the next word, "died, I learned that there was actually something far worse than all the fighting and screaming and yelling and arguing and crying -- worse than all the hospital trips and the hiding under the bed -- worse than the sounds of the sirens and those strange voices that came and went and later, that seemingly unending stream of questions that came from official-looking strangers.

"No, the worst thing was the silence.

"I mean there was silence before then. And secrets and lies and stories and pretending. But this silence was different. It was an utterly and absolutely deafening deathly silence.

"And even all these years later -- how many is it now?" She paused and her fingers moved as she counted them out. "More than twenty-four years now -- and that silence is still there -- that same silence -- in all the things you just don't talk about -- in all the words that don't get spoken."

Sara stopped for a moment to take a deep breath and briskly wipe the last of the tears from her face with the handkerchief that Grissom had wordlessly placed in front of her.

When she continued, her voice was slightly steadier, surer, but her words no less unfelt or unrestrained, "For the longest time, there seemed to be a lot of good reasons to stay silent. For so many times I heard people, well meaning people I suppose, who were more ignorant than unfeeling, ask with-that ever present disapproving shake of the head how could someone -- anyone -- willingly let another person hurt them -- abuse them -- systematically destroy them.

"What they didn't understand -- what people don't -- was that it was easy. It _is_ easy.

"But you can't tell them that because they've already begun the next part that inevitably comes, the part where they continue to say so knowingly that _no one deserves to be abused_.

"As if it were as simple as that. As if it were some innate, inalienable, unquestionable truth that just had to be real. As if it were just that simple to just live in that world, to live within the safety and surety of what they held to believe."

She sighed and shook her head sadly before saying, "It doesn't work that way.

"Maybe there is no reason for it, no rhyme or rationale. It… it just doesn't. Not for the person living in the reality that those words just don't admit to be possible.

"So all you are left with is silence.

"The silence of all that you don't know or understand or comprehend. That silence that you just learn to live with like you did with all the old secrets and lies and now the new ones.

"I mean, have you ever just… ever just wanted the past to be _the past,_ for it to be gone -- over -- done -- to just no longer exist, so that you didn't have to feel it anymore? That you no longer felt you had to sacrifice your future to your past?"

_Yes_, Grissom thought.

But before he could say so, Sara said with another sad shake of the head, "You know when I started out as a CSI, every time I would see those women, the ones who had been beaten and bruised, both the ones who lived and those who died, I would ache and wonder which ones really were the lucky ones -- the ones who lived or the ones who died.

"I know that sounds horrible. It does. _It is_. But that is what silence and secrets and lies eventually leave you wondering.

"And then you kept talking about _maintaining distance_ and s_cientific objectivity_ and not getting _emotionally involved_. And you didn't know. You couldn't know because of that same damn silence.

"I tried to do what you told me to do. I did try, Gil. I did. Though to you and to everyone else it probably didn't seem that way. But I did.

"But even that didn't end the silence.

"And in the end, what hurt worst of all was the moment I began to accept that silence. When I stopped feeling horrified or angry or appalled or anything at all.

"Because you see that loss of feeling wasn't born out of _objectivity_ or _distance_ or _professionalism_, but pain. The sort of pain that makes you turn away and then just walk away and accept that... that there _is_ nothing you can do but wait until the call comes in for you to come back for the body or bodies. That that is just how it works. That is how it ends.

"You know, I always thought that the worst that ghosts could do was haunt you. Until I learned that those ghosts weren't just the dead who had gone before. They were the specters of living people, too, and sometimes they were shadows of myself -- who I had been, who I was, who I could have been, who I was afraid to become.

"And you tell yourself that you can just live with them -- with all of those ghosts. Then as time passes you actually start to believe that they will just leave you in peace.

"But time means nothing to them. Ghosts have all of eternity to wait, don't they? To wait for that opportune moment, which no matter how hard we fight it, always comes.

"And the ghosts I thought were so long and so well buried, eventually returned to haunt in earnest.

"When all the walls I spent my life building to protect me from them failed, I knew that in the end, I had to confront them -- face my deepest fears and darkest nightmares and the memories I worked so desperately to replace.

"'_Why?_' You ask.

"Because I just want to finally be able to live so that I can say that but for even just one moment that I lived in hope and not in fear.

"But the only way to bury them -- all those ghosts -- to truly bury them -- is to stop being silent -- to stop being afraid.

"I guess that is why I still want to know _why_. So I can be free to finally stop being silent -- so I can bury the dead and all the other ghosts and perhaps not forget or even forgive, but to at least have that peace of knowing that I tried to understand.

"That's why I go every week to see my mother, each time fully intending to just ask that one question -- the one I came all this way to ask. But it's almost like each visit is some strange perverse sort of dance where you get so close to coming to the _why_ and yet, somehow those twenty minutes that feel at once like an eternity, pass in the blink of an eye and the question just never gets asked."

"_Why?_ can be a very dangerous question," Grissom said softly.

Sara's eyes had lost that far-off distant look when they met his for the first time since she had begun to speak about _whys_. They were now not inquisitive per se nor challenging, but almost knowing and her next words less of a question than a realization.

"Is that why you always stick to _who_ and _what_ and _where_ and _how_?"

"Perhaps it's just easier that way," he answered, suddenly a lot more interested in his now cold cup of tea than he had been before. "Or maybe it just seemed that way to me. Besides, the _who_ and _what _and _how_ are often horrifying enough."

"True," Sara conceded.

"And easier to understand."

"Or at least wrap your head around."

Grissom nodded knowingly. That had been the most prevalent peril of his profession -- not being able to understand the things that people did to each other and why it was so much easier -- necessary even -- to so strictly stick to the science, to regard cases as puzzles or mysteries to be solved on a purely intellectual level, to follow the _whos_ and _whats_ and _hows_ instead of the _whys _because...

"You asked '_Why?_'" Sara said, breaking this train of thought, for which he was almost grateful, despite being unsure of precisely what she was referring to.

"What?" He asked.

"When Ecklie suspended me after my fight with Catherine," she answered. "You asked '_Why?_' _Demanded_ to know why I was so angry. Refuse to leave it or me alone. I think that was the first time I had ever hear you ask anyone '_Why?_' Weren't you afraid of what the answer might have been?"

"Honestly? Yes," Grissom replied, still focused on the mug he cradled in his hands. "But I was more afraid of what not asking that question might cost."

He left it there, at that. But Sara knew there was more, so she simply waited for him to continue.

"You," he replied finally, simply peering up at her.

Her lips twitched into a sad hint of a smile as she confessed, "Well, I was a little afraid of the answer to that question, too. And what it might cost and what it almost did."

This time, it was Grissom who waited for her to go on.

"You," she answered at last. "I had never told anyone -- not after I got out of the system -- not after no one had to know. But I had a lot of time to think after the DUI and I realized that I... I wanted to tell you. Not because of anything the PEAP counselor had said, but because I wanted _you_ to know."

His face suddenly clouded over as he remembered and realized, "That first shift after you came back -- that was what you had wanted to talk about."

Sara shrugged and said, "Yeah, well '_later_' just ended up being a lot later I guess. But it always seemed to work out that way, didn't it? Work was like that. It always was. It always is."

"It shouldn't have been though," Grissom countered.

They were both quiet for a while.

"I'm glad – no, that isn't the right word," he stammered a little uneasily, "But right now it's the only one I can --"

Sara placed a warm hand on his arm. "Sometimes, it's okay not to always have just the right word or even to know what to say at all," she interrupted.

He nodded and took a deep breath, then said, "It meant a lot that you trusted me with that."

"With my deepest, darkest secret --"

"Yeah."

"I think it was the '_Why?_' that finally convinced me to do it," she admitted.

"That day," Grissom began, covering her hand with his. "I so wanted to have the words. I wanted so much to be able to take away all the anger and the hurt and the pain and all the horrors of everything that happened to you and just be able to show you the tenderness I never had.

"But I didn't have the words for any of that and I wanted to have them, more for you than for anyone else I've ever known. I wanted to have the words, and yet, I didn't."

"You didn't need them then," Sara replied, squeezing his hand. "'When words are scarce...'"

"'They are seldom spent in vain,'" he finished, a hint of a smile and the slight lilt of tender remembrance in his voice as he did so.

"Not all silences are hurtful or harmful, Gil," Sara said. "You were there. That was -- and is -- what really mattered. You were there and you stayed.

"Believe me, most people would have just left -- thrown up their hands and given up and walked out. Or perhaps even worse, just said whatever they thought I wanted to hear.

"I got a lot of both of those responses growing up in the system. A lot of leaving and a lot of well-meant platitudes. But not from you that day.

"You didn't go or try to say the _right thing_. You were just there. And that meant more to me than you can ever know. And all those things you just said you wanted to do that day, you did them. Not all right then, but in all the weeks and months since. You did that through everything. And just like you were that day, you're still here."

He nodded and took her hand in the same way he had all those years before and simply said, "Always."

Sara smiled -- a genuine grin that extended to her eyes and made them seem to sparkle -- then leaned in and kissed him gently.

As she pulled away, she said, "You do realize that _always_ usually means for a very long time."

His smile mirrored hers as he replied, "The longer the better."


	2. Two

**Two**

_For my father, who was a great lover of stories and history and who in his infinite wisdom gave me typewriter when I was about twelve, but made me figure out what to do with it on my own... _

Sara was washing up the rest of the tea things when a pair of warm arms enveloped her.

"You smell good," she whispered.

Grissom merely shook his head as he said, "It's just soap."

"Still."

She smiled at the roughness of his beard as he buried his face in the nape of her neck.

"You okay?" He asked.

"Yeah," Sara sighed, closing her eyes and relishing in the simple nearness of him. The morning's conversation, while in some ways liberating, had been draining, and probably not just for her. "You?" She asked in return.

Instead of answering, he tightened his grasp and just held her. His fingers slipped beneath the edge of her shirt. She relaxed further into him, knowing from the way his hand rested on her bare stomach, that it wasn't meant to be a seductive caress, but rather a gesture of longing for closeness and connection.

"Gil?" She whispered as she covered his hand with her still wet ones.

His lips twitched into a slight smile against her skin. "Why don't you let me finish up here, while you go and get dressed," he suggested. "There's somewhere I'd like to take you."

"Now?" She queried in disbelief.

"Yes."

She leaned forward to peer out the window. "But it's not even light yet."

"Humor me," he replied, kissing the back of her neck.

When she turned to face him and kiss him back, and perhaps even tease him a bit more, there was something different in the way he was looking at her. There was that glimmer in his eyes, the one she had only seen when they were alone like this and there was a hint of amusement there, too, but then also something else, some other emotion she could not quite place. It was not quite desperation -- a strange sense of urgency perhaps. That look was what made further protests seem pointless, so Sara merely nodded and told him that she would be right out.

As long as she had known him, Sara had known that Grissom was not exactly a physically demonstrative sort of person. It wasn't that he didn't show affection, or couldn't be very affectionate, but more often than not, these displays were reserved for private moments. So Sara was slightly surprised that after he took her hand to help her out of the car, he didn't release his grasp. Instead, he threaded his fingers between hers and gave them a gentle squeeze. She stood there for a moment, slightly stunned, until he turned to her and gave her an almost shy sort of smile before tugging her forward.

"Are you going to tell me where we're going?" She asked when she finally got her voice back.

"You don't recognize where we are?" He merely inquired in return.

She peered around. The sun was just rising, although with all of the characteristic bay fog, it was hard to make out anything besides the fact they were in a park.

She shook her head. "I didn't really do a lot of sightseeing when I lived here," Sara answered.

"Peters indicated as much."

"Well, Jack talks too much."

"Old habits die hard?" Grissom asked. "_Yours_, not Peters,'" he clarified.

"This coming from the man who hasn't taken a voluntary week off in how many years?" Sara protested.

"I tried to take two to come and see you, but Ecklie wanted more notice."

She shook her head ruefully. "I still can't believe you intentionally got yourself suspended."

"You regretting me coming?" He asked.

"No. Just surprised at your methods."

"Well, desperate times call for desperate measures."

"I have never known you to ever be desperate," Sara countered.

"I was," he admitted softly.

She gave his hand a slight squeeze. "I am glad you came."

"Good."

"So where are you taking me?" She asked. "I didn't think you knew San Francisco that well."

"Well, this was one of the few places here that we ever went to when I was a kid."

"_Your_ family went on vacation?"

"Why does that seem so strange to you?"

"I just thought you didn't know what vacations were because you just had never been on one," Sara retorted.

"Funny, dear."

"You still haven't answered my question," she persisted. "Do you actually know where we're going or are we wondering around in the fog for no reason?"

Instead of answering her, he took her by the shoulders and turned her around.

Sara's eyes went wide.

Even in the emerging light, it was a spectacular sight.

Almost like an apparition from out of a fairy tale, an enormous glass palace emerged from out of the midst, looking both strangely out of place amongst the towering palm trees and ornamental plantings as well as entirely at home.

Grissom smiled at her amazement. "It's the Conservatory of Flowers," he explained. "The oldest public one of its kind in the United States."

"Why don't I remember ever hearing about it?"

"It was destroyed in a storm in 1995 and didn't reopen again until 2003," he offered. "From what I read, the restoration was rather exacting. I haven't been here since I was eight, but it looks just like I remember it."

He tugged her towards the entrance.

"Gil, they can't be open for hours."

"Not to the public they aren't," he replied. "But a colleague of mine knows the head lepidopterist."

"Is this one of those six degrees of separation moments?" She asked.

"The entomology community isn't that large."

"Why? Because bugs aren't charismatic mega-vertebrates?" Sara nettled.

"Yeah, well they're still cool."

"True," she conceded. "Wait a minute. A lepidopterist at a conservatory?" She asked. And then she saw the banners along the walkway. "Butterflies? So that's why we're here?"

"Actually, no."

"You mean to tell me a bug guy is passing on visiting a butterfly..."

"A butterfly _and moth_ exhibit..." Grissom corrected her.

"To look at plants?" She continued in disbelief.

"Not just any plants."

He flipped open his cell phone and dialed. A few minutes later, a bleary-eyed security guard greeted them.

"Doctor Grissom?" He asked. "Lisa said we should be expecting you. She won't be in until after nine, but she said to let you have a look around yourself."

As they stepped into the lobby, Sara said, "That sounds a lot more friendly than you knowing a friend of a friend..."

"When we used to come here, they would open it early. My father would be off talking with some specialist or other while my mother would go about admiring the flowers and I would go looking for bugs."

"And that's changed how?" She asked with a smug grin. He ignored it and her question.

"They were one of the few places to have carnivorous plants on display at the time. I remember that once I became so enraptured by watching a cockroach struggle in a pitcher plant that by the time my parents found me, I was in a whole lot of trouble."

"But not quite as much trouble as the cockroach I would imagine."

"I never thought I would ever hear you despair over the fate of a cockroach," Grissom said with a bemused smile and shake of the head.

"Just because I don't get the appeal of keeping them as pets, doesn't mean that I'm all that _enraptured_ by the idea of watching them getting eaten," she countered.

"_Digested_ actually, and apparently, it happens all the time around here."

"Saves on pest control then," Sara quipped, still a little discomforted by the thought.

As they stepped into the center exhibit, Sara stopped and found herself staring again. In the center of the building, beneath the great five-story high dome stretched the largest philodendron she had ever seen.

"It's at least a hundred years old," Grissom said, joining her gaze. "They had to work around it when the were rebuilding the conservatory."

"It's amazing."

"You haven't seen anything yet."

They wandered about, Sara peering up at the rich canopy of green studded here and there with the splashes of colorful and exotic fruit.

"Tell me, was the rainforest like this?" She asked, removing her sweater.

"Hot and humid? Yes, but a lot wetter and noisier."

"Nosier?"

"With insects mostly, but there were bird calls and the occasional primate cry."

"You must have been in heaven."

"There were moments when it was," he answered. "And moments when it was hell. While bullet ants are interesting to study, it wasn't all that interesting to slip and end up in the midst of one of their colonies."

"Ouch," she hissed.

"And one can get tired of being wet."

"Is that why you eventually moved to Vegas -- the dry heat?"

"It was better than the bitter cold of Minnesota."

"If winters were half as bad there as they were in Massachusetts..." Sara sighed.

"About twice as worse actually," Grissom replied. "Is that why you decided to go back to California for graduate school, because you couldn't take the cold?"

"Pretty much," she admitted.

"It wasn't _that_ bad."

"This from the man who wears a jacket when it's ninety degrees."

"Speaking of temperature," Grissom said as they stepped into the next exhibit where the air suddenly became markedly cooler and they found themselves surrounded by mist and moss and ferns and vines and orchids.

"I always thought of orchids as warm weather plants," Sara whispered, equally awed at their new surroundings.

"These are from higher altitudes. Look at this one." He gestured to a rather startling looking flower that had almost a ghoulish appearance to it. "It's a Dracula orchid."

"As in Stoker?" She asked.

"No as in 'little dragon,'" He answered. "See the pronounced lip to it. It swings back and forth to woo insects."

"It looks a lot more scary than sexy to me."

Grissom laughed.

"And this one --" He pointed to something that didn't look much like a flower at all, but more like a fly resting on a leaf. "Male flies think it's a female and when they try to mate with it, they only succeed in helping to pollinate the plant."

"Now, I am starting to see how a bug guy knows so much about plants," Sara smiled.

"My father used to take me into his greenhouse, even when I was little. But I think he was a little disappointed that I was more interested in catching aphids than admiring his plants. And this, is where I got into trouble," Grissom said as they stepped into the next room, this one filled with large pools blanketed with giant water lilies.

"Can we pass on the bug-eating plants please?" Sara pleaded, seeing the sign for carnivorous plants overhead.

Grissom shook his head. "Suit yourself."

Sara leaned over the edge of the pool. "I've seen these sort of water lilies before," she said. "But never this large."

"_Victoria amazonica._ The curator once told me that they could support the weight of a small child, but I never got to try it out as my father was shooting me a _don't you dare_ look at the time. But I've see capybara and jacana walk across them like they were solid ground. But this," he said as he lead her back through to the western wing, "is what I really wanted to show you. This was my father's favorite place."

"A room full of potted plants?" Sara asked, not sounding particularly impressed.

"Ah, but you see, potted plants were the heart and soul of the Victorian hothouse," Grissom began. "The pots allowed for a collector to display a large array of flowers in a small space. And the variety of flowers you could find even in private collections at the time was amazing. The great world exhibitions in Paris and Chicago, even here in San Francisco, housed mind-bogglingly diverse collections of flowers, each more exotic and grander than the last. Their organizers used to specially fund expeditions to locate the newest and most unusual of specimens.

"Hothouses were a sort of mania at the time. And one of my father's obsessions. He always dreamed of owning a period-style hothouse and not just a little greenhouse in the backyard. The sort of hothouses like the ones that supplied the heroes of Henry James and Oscar Wilde with the perfect buttonholes for every social occasion."

"'The only link between art and nature...'" Sara quoted.

"Yes," Grissom smiled at the reference. But the smile quickly turned to something a bit more wistful. "But he never got around to building it. I suppose it was something he intended to do after he retired from teaching."

"He was young when he died then?"

"Not exactly young. About my age now," he answered. "But young enough for it to be sudden and unexpected."

"I'm sorry," Sara whispered, taking up his hand and giving it a gentle squeeze. She knew it was always difficult for him to talk about his family, though she was never quite sure why.

"Yeah, me, too." Grissom gestured for her to sit down beside him on bench. "You know I never really got a chance to answer your question earlier. Not really."

"What question was that?" She asked.

"Why I always stick to the_ who_ and _what_ and _where_ and _how_ instead of dealing with the _why_."

Sara shrugged. "You said it was just easier that way. I can understand that. I mean I don't quite get the _what_ that people do to each other, not anymore than you do, and I certainly seldom get the _why_."

"But that isn't why, Sara," he began. "Or at least not all of it._ Why_ was always the one question that never seemed to have an answer.

"When my father died, no one would tell me why. No one. No matter who I asked or how many times I tried. No one would tell me _why_.

"Just as no one would tell me why life didn't just stop when someone you loved died. I mean I understood that for the person who died, that their life, at least as what we knew of it, did. But for everyone else, for the rest of the world, it didn't. And it was as if it didn't know or care that for you the whole world had suddenly and irrevocably been changed.

"Maybe not so much on the outside perhaps. You still stood on that same corner. The school bus still came. And for a little while, you found yourself confronted with sad looks. But before long, everyone and everything went back to the way it was before. It went back to normal and you were left alone in knowing that it was different.

"Left alone to have to keep breathing in and out. To have to keep waking up each morning to that absence when there used to be a presence.

"Forgetting was the hardest part. Because I felt that as long as I still had my memories, if they were still there, clear and bright and real enough, well, then he wasn't really gone.

"But you know, I can quote Shakespeare and Wilde and who knows how many others and yet, honestly, I can't remember the color of my father's eyes.

"When the forgetting began, that was when I began to focus on remembering -- not so much the past -- but the present. Because I thought that if I could remember everything, I wouldn't miss anything, not a sign or a clue or some small, seemingly insignificant detail that just might make everything make sense.

"And if I couldn't know _why_, I could try and learn and figure out everything else.

"And if I could figure out everything else, well then maybe the world would finally make sense.

"But the more I learned, the more I knew, the less things did. But I kept trying to find the answer, the answer to everything."

"'Forty-two,'" Sara whispered.

"What?"

"The answer to 'life, the universe and everything' -- '_forty-two_.'"

Grissom nodded. "Try to find a definitive answer to the wrong question and you still end up, however correct that answer might be, with the wrong answer."

Sara nodded. "That and a question is only as good as the quality of questions that it evokes, not in the eloquence of its answer," she added. "You taught me that."

"True."

"But that's not much help when you are nine."

"Or nineteen, or twenty-nine -- thirty-nine -- even forty-nine. Sara, I still have so many questions, so much I want to know. But we were all too afraid of that _why_ that we never spoke about it."

"Because it was the one question for which there was no simple answer," Sara supplied.

He nodded. "And now, it's too late to ask, so you are just left with that one unanswerable question. So you just bury it. Keep burying it with life, with busyness."

"But it doesn't go away," she said softly, knowing all too well how that worked.

"No, not really."

"And it never stays buried."

"No. And you just stay afraid," Grissom said shaking his head wistfully. "My mother used to say that it always amazed her that the people who seemed so fearless were the one's who were the most scared. She never understood how I could face down killers and rapists, criminals of all sorts, but I couldn't face my own life.

"All I knew was that I never wanted to hurt like that again -- to care for anyone like that -- to allow myself to feel anything at all."

"But you did."

"Despite what you and all the others have said over the years, yes," he answered sadly.

"Gil --"

He brushed away her apology, but accepted the warmth of her hand on his. "But you know me. I always thought that if I just ignored any problem that I didn't know how to solve, it would eventually just go away.

"Instead, it only ever got worse. Until you have no idea how it could have happened or gone so wrong so fast.

"Like it did with Warrick.

"And you. I almost lost you the same way. By hoping it would just go away. Because I didn't want to ask _why _-- why it wouldn't -- why the feelings, the longing, the hoping just wouldn't go away.

"And I came so close to loosing you -- more times than I can count, more times than I know or want to know.

"All because I thought that all the other questions would tell me everything I needed to know.

"But just like with my father, with Warrick, with you, all the other answers, everything that I could know, all the books and facts and data, they were as comfortless an answer as 'forty-two.'"

Sara took his face into her hands and peered into his eyes. She understood. She understood, too, that at this moment there were no words to express that ache, no words to soothe away that ceaseless desire to know and understand, so she simply drew him to her and held him, conferring what comfort she could in just being there with him as he had been there for her.

After a long while, she pulled away and kissed him, softly, gently at first, and then deeper and longer, as if she were trying to pour all of her hope and love and longing, all that was good that remained of her, into him with each kiss, each caress.

For a long time after, they merely sat there, both silent amongst the green, until the still and the quiet was interrupted by the sounds of children's laughter and exuberance and the futile attempts of school chaperones to keep control of their charges.

"Shall we go see what all the commotion is about?" Sara offered.

Grissom nodded. "Besides, they do have one more thing in their collection I wanted especially to show you. This one I think you'll recognize."

"Oh?"

He extended his hand and she took it and they followed the children into the butterfly display.


	3. Three

**Three**

Grissom sighed. There was something inherently peaceful about spending an afternoon in the park simply lying in the grass watching the way the light and shadows danced among the leaves of the trees overhead. It was even more so at this moment as his head rested on Sara's stomach while her fingers were lazily lingering in his hair.

After the clamor and chaos of the butterfly exhibit at the conservatory, they had both eagerly retreated to a relatively quiet corner in Golden Gate Park.

For a while, Grissom was absorbed in examining a ladybug crawling idly up his hand.

"Looks like you made a friend," Sara said softly. "They bring good luck you know -- ladybugs."

"Really?" Grissom asked.

"Don't tell me there's some insect mythos that you don't know about?" When he didn't deign to answer, she continued, saying, "They bring you luck when they land on you. And if you catch one and make a wish before you let it go, then your wish is supposed to come true."

He gingerly placed the insect on Sara's arm. "Go ahead," he said.

"What, too old to make a wish?" She inquired with a grin. "Or are wishes not scientific enough for you?"

"No," he answered with a slight shake of the head.

"What then?"

"I don't need one," he simply replied.

Sara's mouth opened and closed several times without her being able to say anything. Grissom propped himself onto his elbow to peer down at her. "You all right?" He asked.

She nodded and then coaxed the ladybug onto her finger. "Neither do I," she said, depositing the insect on the sunny head of a dandelion.

They shared a smile before Grissom laid back down against her. They were quiet for a long time until Sara said almost absently, "I think dandelions are highly underrated."

Grissom's lips twitched into the ghost of a grin as he said, "My father used to say that weeds were just misplaced flowers. But somehow that assertion didn't get me out of having to dig them out my mother's flower beds when I was growing up."

Sara fingered the tiny petals of the nearest one. "I never understood why people revile them so much. They are bright and colorful – almost like a hint of sunshine on a cloudy day. Besides, they are even edible -- and not just the leaves, but the flowers, too."

"I think I will take your word on that, dear."

"You've never eaten a dandelion?" When he shook his head in reply, Sara sighed, "The man who puts ants on his eggs and snacks on chocolate-covered grasshoppers is afraid to eat a simple little flower?"

"Fine," Grissom conceded, amused at the sudden strange sort of role reversal. "I'll raise you an entire window box full of dandelions and even eat them." Then seemingly as if to reconsider his promise, he inquired warily, "You don't cook them do you?"

"You mean me in particular or just in general?" She asked, but before he could answer, she said, "Not usually. Although I did hear that you could fry the flower heads and eat them." When he continued to look rather surprised the depth of her knowledge on the subject, she said, "You're not the only one whose head is full of seemingly useless information."

"There is nothing useless--" He began to protest, but she cut him off with a kiss, which happened to be his favorite means of being interrupted.

As he pulled away, Grissom smiled and brushed a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. These quiet moments together had always been the most precious – the time when all the world seemed to stop and they could just be.

As much as he was loath to interrupt that, he knew that he couldn't put off any longer asking her the question that had been plaguing him for several days now.

"There's something I've been wanting to ask you," he began gently.

"Oh?" She asked, her voice faint and a touch of hesitancy in her response.

He took a deep breath before proceeding. "May I meet your mother?"

Sara's face clouded over. The question hung there between them for a few long moments.

"It's okay to say no," Grissom hurriedly added, when no answer from her seemed to be forthcoming.

Sara chewed at her lower lip a little uneasily. "It's not that," she replied after a while. Her eyes met his as she continued, "I guess I just don't quite understand why."

He sighed. "That seems to be the question of the day."

"Yeah."

"My mother, she always liked you," Grissom said wistfully.

"_Me_? How?" She asked nonplussed. "We never met."

"Still," he replied. "She used to ask after you all the time."

"And after Catherine and Jim and Nick and Greg and pretty much everyone else you worked with I'd imagine," Sara contended.

Her eyes went wide in surprise to his answer of "No, just you really."

"I wish I had gotten to meet her," she said after the initial shock had worn off and the realization of what his words really meant set in.

"Me, too," Grissom whispered, touching her cheek fondly. She turned her head and placed a kiss in the center of his palm. "She's your mother, your family, that's why," he continued, finally answering her original question.

Sara let out a heavy sigh and shook her head. "Not really. Not for a long time. And even before, we were never that close."

"Are you afraid she'll tell horribly embarrassing stories about you from when you were a kid?" Grissom teased, hoping to lighten the mood.

"Is that what your mother did to you?" She answered his question in kind.

"I never really had girls to bring home," he admitted openly and without reservation.

"Too busy with dead things to be interested in girls?" Sara retorted, sounding slightly amused at this.

"Dead things were a lot easier to understand than girls."

"And now?" She asked.

"Dead things are still a lot easier," he replied with a rueful sort of smile.

"True," she conceded. Then her face became pensive. After a while, she whispered, "Okay." When he looked a little puzzled at this, she said, "It's okay for you to see her."

"Your mother?"

"Yeah," she answered nodding. "Besides, I think you probably have a lot more embarrassing stories to tell about me than she does."

"Really?" Grissom asked, one eyebrow raised curiously and a glimmer of mischief in his eyes.

"Don't you dare," Sara warned.

"Of course not, dear."

"You are so dead when we get back."

Grissom leaned back to rest his head against her stomach again. "Then I guess I better enjoy this afternoon," he replied.


	4. Four

**Four**

"You have a hot date I don't know about?" Grissom asked as Sara emerged from the bathroom early the next morning smartly dressed and neatly coiffed.

"It is one of those strange, inexplicable facts of life that you have to get dressed up in order to go out to buy a dress," she explained with a rueful shake of the head.

"I'd offer to come and help, but I don't think you really want me tagging along."

"Apart from the fact that that would spoil the surprise, you'd be bored out of your mind. _I'm_ going to be bored out of my mind," Sara grumbled. "But is seems that a wedding necessitates the purchase of a wedding dress, in some form or fashion."

Grissom dug into his jacket pocket, fished out his keys and extended them to her. "Why don't you take the car then?"

Sara gaped. "You're going to let me drive _your_ car?"

"You make it sound like that's something unusual."

"Well, as you usually don't let anyone within five feet of your car..."

"You _have_ driven my car before," Grissom maintained. "Besides, you're going to be a while and the car would make it a lot easier to get around."

"Probably."

"Then take the car," he insisted.

"But what about you? I don't want you to be stranded here all day."

"Sara, I do know how to call a taxi," Grissom replied, slightly exasperated. "Besides, I have a few things I need to take care of on my own, too."

"Oh?" She asked.

"Not telling, dear. So don't waste your time asking."

"Fine," Sara said, taking the keys from him and leaning in to give him a peck on the cheek. "I'll see you when I get back then. Try and stay out of trouble."

He gave her a _who me? _look and wink which caused her to shake her head and sigh as she left.

As the door closed behind her, he reached for his phone and dialed. When the voice on the other end efficiently chimed, "San Francisco Department of Criminalistics," Grissom said, "Jack Peters, please."

Peters picked up after the second ring and answered in what Grissom was quickly coming to recognize as the man's quintessentially convivial tone, "Two social calls from Las Vegas' esteemed Dr. Grissom in one week. I'm not sure if I should be flattered or worried.

"To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure or have you decided to disguise your latest attempt to abscond with more of my staff by contacting me by phone rather than by stopping by?"

"Actually," Grissom replied. "I need a favor -- two really..."

XXXXXXX

Grissom was suitably ensconced in a taxi when he made the second of his calls.

"Devotion to your work is one thing, Gil," Catherine began before he could get in any sort of a greeting. "But as far as I know, you are still on suspension and contrary to what you might think, we can handle things around here without you."

"Of that I have no doubt," He readily conceded. "But I'm not calling about work --"

XXXXXXX

His third call was met with a slightly less suspicious reception or at least he was able to get a word in first edgewise.

"Jim, it's Gil," he said.

On the other end of the line, Brass gave a hearty chuckle before saying, "I thought as much from the caller id, but considering the last time I called this number, I got Sara, I thought I would wait to make sure. You two okay?"

"Yeah, we're fine."

"We're all fine here by the way, thanks for asking," Brass rejoined. "But that isn't why you called, is it?"

"No."

"Well --" he coaxed.

"I have some news," Grissom said finally.

"You are coming back, right?" He asked, his voice shifting from amusement to concern.

"Yeah, but not alone."

"That's good to hear."

"Or single."

For the next ninety-seconds, there was nothing but dead air.

XXXXXXX

Grissom's final interview of the day however, resulted in him being the one momentarily taken aback.

As he sat down at the table in one of San Francisco PD's interrogation rooms, he extended his hand to the woman sitting quietly across from him.

"Gil Grissom," he said.

Laura Sidle took it, asking as she did so, "_Grissom_? Any relation to a Sara Grissom?"

"In a matter of speaking," he replied.

"Then tell me something, Mr. Grissom --" she began.

"Gil, please."

"Well then, Gil," she said, fixing on him those dark brown eyes that were so reminiscent of Sara's. "How long have you been in love with my daughter?"

Instead of looking stunned or stammering in response, he simply smiled and replied after a moment, "Forever."

XXXXXXX

When Sara returned to the flat a few hours later, she found Grissom busy in the kitchen.

"Sounds perfect," she was saying into her phone. "Thanks, Sandra. I owe you big time." She clicked the phone shut and shrugged off her jacket.

"I thought you went out shopping," he called, gesturing to her apparent lack of packages with a sauce spoon and succeeding in splattering pasta sauce all over his shirt, a fact he seemed too preoccupied to notice.

"I did," Sara said, trying to contain a grin.

"But you didn't get anything."

"The dress shopping was a bust, but I did get one thing," she answered. "But I am neither showing nor telling."

Grissom didn't rise to the bait.

"Hence the call to Sandra then," he said, returning his attention to the sauce bubbling on the small stovetop.

"Where else was I supposed to find a dress on less than a week's notice?" She asked. "Thank goodness for overnight delivery. I don't know why I didn't think of her in the first place. Besides, I don't recall you complaining about the last dress I bought from her."

Grissom smiled, remembering fondly the stunning morpho-shaded shift Sara had worn on their first date -- or for at least part of their date.

"True," he admitted without a hint of reluctance.

She came up behind him and gave him a long, lingering kiss on the cheek.

"That smells good," she said, peering over his shoulder.

"It's just pasta," he grinned.

"Your pasta is never_ just pasta_," she laughed.

"Well, I had to improvise a little as your kitchen isn't exactly conducive to actual cooking."

"I like how you improvised the rather colorful addition to your wardrobe, too," said Sara, gesturing to his shirt.

He swore and began to hurriedly undo the buttons while she collected ice from the tiny freezer.

"Did you get all of your super secret things taken care of?" she asked.

"I did actually."

"At least one of us had a productive day it seems," she said, reaching for the dishwashing soap as he slipped the shirt from his shoulders.

"It was a good day," he admitted. "A very good day."


	5. Five

**Five**

_with thanks to jp, jc, ls, pr and jp... who all had to listen to me endlessly agonize over Sara's final visit to her mother... _

"Gil, we're going to be late," Sara called, hurriedly slipping on her shoes and giving herself one last look in the mirror more out of nerves than vanity.

While she wasn't entirely looking forward to another Saturday afternoon spent at the California State Correctional Facilities, she knew this would likely be the last time she would get a chance to talk to her mother for a while.

And she had to admit that it was time.

Time to do what she had actually come all this way to do in the first place.

_Yes_, she thought taking a deep breath. _It was time_.

Although for some reason on this particular afternoon, Grissom appeared to be utterly oblivious to even the basic concept of time.

"Gil?" She asked again when no answer was forthcoming.

When he emerged from the bathroom a few moments later, he made no apologies, nor looked to be in any sort of a hurry or even seemed to notice that Sara was getting antsier and more anxious by the minute.

"_Gilbert!_" She finally cried in exasperation, after he spent several seemingly unending minutes searching his jacket pockets for his keys. She snatched them off the table and held them up for him impatiently.

"Thanks," he said. "Come on. You don't want to be late do you?" He asked when she just stood there staring.

Sara decided it best to keep her reply to herself, but she was having a hard time keeping her further frustration and mounting irritation in check when Grissom made two wrong turns in quick succession and refused to acknowledge his mistake when she pointed out to him that they were going the wrong way.

"No, we're not," he patiently told her a second time.

"I know the way and this isn't it," she insisted.

"We aren't going to the correctional facility," Grissom replied nonchalantly.

"What?" Sara protested, both wide-eyed and indignant. "Gil, it's Saturday afternoon."

"I know," he answered evenly, continuing to drive.

She had no response to this. She merely gaped at him in wordless shock and disbelief.

After a few tense silent minutes, he seemed to sense her growing disquiet for he turned to her and said, "On Saturday afternoons you go to see your mother."

_And?_ Sara wanted to ask. _And we are running late and are going the wrong way because..._

But she didn't. For some reason she just couldn't say anything. Not when Grissom turned and pulled into an unfamiliar parking lot. Not when he got out of the car and went to open her door. Not even when he took her hand and tugged her towards the entrance of a rather shabby looking public building.

"There's just been a change of venue," Grissom finally explained. "I thought you might like more than twenty minutes this time," he added.

Sara stopped, having just caught sight of the sign proclaiming this to be headquarters for the San Francisco Police Department. She was momentarily taken aback by the fact that she hadn't recognized the building before, but then quickly remembered that as a rookie CSI she had spent most of her time either in the lab or in the field and hadn't made all that many trips to PD.

Grissom tugged on her hand again and lead her into the lobby. "And here you can take as much time as you want."

"You arranged this?" She stammered, surprised and feeling slightly abashed all at once.

He nodded, pausing momentarily to flash the desk attendant his identification. The guard buzzed them through. "With Peters' help, yes." And as if anticipating her next question said as they were emptying their pockets to go through the metal detectors, "No, he's not here."

"You arranged this?" She repeated equally as dumbfounded as before as she followed him down a long corridor.

"You better get going," he merely replied, indicating the door a dour looking police officer was guarding.

"Aren't you coming in?" She asked.

Grissom shook his head. "No."

"But I thought you wanted to..."

"I already did," he replied.

Sara suddenly felt the knot in her stomach tighten further. "Did you..." she began uneasily. "Did you talk about --"

"No," Grissom answered, giving her a soft reassuring smile. "Mostly we mostly talked about you. Nothing that embarrassing, I promise," he reassured her and gave her hand a gentle press before placing a kiss into her palm. "Go on. You don't want to keep her waiting."

It was several hours later when Sara sunk into the chair beside him and reached over and took his hand.

When Grissom met her eyes, he wasn't surprised to see that they looked tired and a little red, but the haunted look he expected to see -- the one he had glimpsed both when he had first arrived in San Francisco and after the last time Sara had gone to see her mother -- wasn't there. In its place, there seemed to be a suggestion of ease almost, a hint of calmness he had not seen in a long time, despite the smiles and laughter that they had lately shared.

It wasn't the look of the end of something, but rather that of the beginning -- of possibilities and perhaps some small measure of peace.

She gave him a slight, placid sort of smile in reply to his inquiring glance, an expression he happily returned. He nodded and they both rose with him resting his hand in small of her back as they both wordlessly walked out of waiting room.

They didn't immediately return to his car. Instead, Sara tugged him towards the sidewalk. There was something inherently liberating about being outside the confines of four walls even if the afternoon had proven a little cooler than Sara expected. When she shivered a little in the light breeze, Grissom stopped, shrugged off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

"Thanks," she whispered. He nodded and they had continued wandering down the street for a while when she said, "For today. For everything."

"Well, you do owe Peters' lunch now," he replied. When she looked a little disquieted by this idea, he added, "No family talk, he promised." But it was his next words of "Although he did say that as I wasn't family quite yet, that you and I were fair game" that earned him a hint of a smile. "_You_ have to promise nothing embarrassing though."

"That would take all the fun out of it," Sara said giving him a genuine grin now.

He gave her an admonitory raise of the eyebrow, which she knew better than to take seriously.

She squeezed his hand and whispered, "She likes you, you know, my mother."

"Oh?"

"Although since she thought the whole bug thing was a little weird, I didn't tell her about Miss Piggy," Sara teased.

"What is it with you and my pig?" He asked incredulously.

"Jealousy, I guess," Sara answered. "She's always been your favorite."

"Hardly," Grissom answered. After a moment, his light tone turned solemn. "You okay?"

She knew he meant _had everything gone okay with your mother?_ but that it was all right to simply answer _yes_ or _no_ if she didn't want or wasn't quite ready to talk about it.

"Yeah." And she meant it.

The reality of it was, the visit really had changed little and yet everything all at once.

The past was the past. It couldn't be changed or undone. The truth was, there really wasn't any comfort to be found in the _whys_ of what had happened -- that the real comfort came not in the answer, but in the act of finally being able to ask that question, in having finally taken that step to move beyond the silence.

"I'm glad," was all he said, though part of him wanted to tell her how proud he was of her, how much he admired her for what she had done; that he knew and understood how much it had cost her to do it.

Sara wanted to tell him how much it had meant that he had done all of this for her and that despite everything that had happened over the months they had been apart, he had never given up on her or them, that despite the time and distance, he had still been there with her all along.

Instead, she stopped and kissed him, long and lingering on the cheek and said, "Come on, let's go home."


	6. Six

**Six**

Sara was in the process of changing into more comfortable clothes when she realized that Grissom had yet to return, despite the fact that he had stepped out just before she had stepped into the shower. She was equally surprised to find that the crisp and bright day had suddenly turned into a dark and stormy late afternoon. At least for the moment though, while the rain had begun to pelt down in opaque sheets, the thunder still vaguely grumbled off in the distance.

She pulled a robe over her shoulders and leaned out the door, hoping to catch some sight of him. This proving futile, she quickly shut the door and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea.

The cold of a hand pressed against her back bled through her thin robe and camisole as she reached into the cabinet for mugs.

"You do realize that we just end up breaking more mugs when you do that," she insisted, not in the least startled by the fact that he had managed to yet again sneak up on her. "Besides, I thought you were just stepping out for a moment." Her wry smile grew into something more slightly concerned when she turned to face Grissom. "And why," she asked, running her fingers through his damp hair, "are you all wet?"

"I had to stop for something."

"In this rain?"

He nodded. "I didn't think the building manager would mind and I thought you could use a little extra sunshine today," he replied, extending a small bouquet of half-shut dandelions, which she was quick to note were tied together not by ribbon but by a spare bindle from his kit. "Of course I forgot that the flowers were photosensitive and close up when it rains, but they should perk up in the light."

Sara smiled and fingered the petals fondly. Grissom reached out to wipe a tear from her cheek. "Thank you," she said. He nodded, drew her in for a hug and stroked her hair as he held her close.

They broke apart at the whistle of the kettle. As she turned her attention to the stove, she said, "You really should get out of those wet clothes. Take a warm shower. I can always reheat the water."

He leaned in and kissed her in the space just behind her left ear before he replied, "Yes, dear," and did as he was told.

When he came out, he found her placing two steaming mugs on the coffee table in front of the sofa.

"You have impeccable timing as always," he teased, gesturing to the cups.

"No," she countered, taking a seat on the couch. "You are just incredibly predictable when it comes to some things."

"Oh?"

"For instance, your showers normally last no fewer than four minutes but no more than six, unless they are post-decomp showers or it's been a particularly hard day."

"Your powers of observation are impressive as always, my dear," Grissom said, sitting down beside her.

Sara smiled, pleased at the compliment. "However, sometimes the things you do are impossible to predict. Like the flowers," she said, gesturing to the dandelions now sitting in a tumbler on the counter, their bright cheerful blooms spread wide again. "You do realize that you often have the oddest taste in gifts? And yet," she continued, still smiling, "somehow, they are perfect just the same. Some just take a little longer to work out than others." She paused and took a long sip of tea. "I'm still puzzling after one though," she admitted.

"Oh?"

"The cocoon," Sara supplied after a while.

Grissom smiled. "You seemed to handle it just fine."

"I had to do a little research after it arrived."

"I thought you might," he replied, picking up his own cup and cradling it in his hands.

"Well, as there wasn't any note or explanation or instructions..."

From over the rim of the mug, he peered up and over at her as he said, "I knew you'd work it out."

"Well, it took a while to track down specifically what it was besides just another cocoon. You do know that there is no on-line database for identifying cocoons?"

He nodded. "Still, you didn't seem all that surprised after it hatched."

Sara laughed. "Not half as surprised as Hodges from what I could hear from your end of the phone call. Why on earth was he in your office? Feeding your pets?"

"Actually, yes."

"And with all the creatures you keep in your office, he was frightened of a little moth?" She chuckled in disbelief.

"With a six inch wingspan, _little_ isn't exactly how I would describe it," Grissom countered. "Besides, I think his response was more based upon the fact that he had somehow managed to let it loose. How, I have no idea."

"Hence the rescue mission at three in the morning," Sara sighed.

"Yeah."

"But I remember it being light by the time you got back home. Did time just get away from you or just the moth?"

"Mostly the moth," he replied. "Until I figured out that it was a male rather than a female. Then it was easy."

"Oh?" She queried curiously. "You never did tell me how you ended up catching him."

"Lit a candle," he answered simply. When the look she gave him indicated he was being his usual cryptic self, he added, "The flame of a candle attracts male moths because apparently when it comes to the identification of the pheromones that the females give off, moth olfaction is partially dependent on the recognition of certain infra-red frequencies, which coincidentally coincide with the spectra produced by a lit candle."

"So you lured him there under false pretenses..."

"You make it sound so sordid when you put it that way," he said looking a little sheepish. "I'm sorry you didn't get to see it hatch," he continued, this time his smile more apologetic than anything.

"You didn't either," Sara nodded sadly. That had been right after Natalie --

He placed a comforting hand on her knee as he answered, his voice a little wistful, too, "No."

Sara covered his hand with hers. "You were right though," she said, trying to lighten the mood. "When you were finally able to bring him home, he was an impressive specimen." She put down her cup and said, "Tell me something, did you know they would be hatching them at the conservatory?"

Grissom gave her a guilty, yet wholly remorseless sort of grin. "When I heard about the exhibit, I asked the head lepidopterist to send me a species list... It was just one of those fortuitous happenstances that they exhibited _Antheraea polyphemus."_

"And that I got to see one hatch after all, which was worth it despite all of the screaming children."

"Why they were afraid of butterflies, I will never understand," he said with bemused shake of the head. "Lions and tigers I could understand. But butterflies don't even have teeth."

"No idea," Sara replied. "_Lions and tigers and blue morphos, oh my_, just doesn't seem to sound as menacing." They shared a smile for a moment. "But all of that still doesn't explain the gift."

Grissom seemed to be considering her query for a moment. He finished the last of his tea, put his mug down next to hers, and settled back into the sofa, pulling her towards him so her head rested against his shoulder.

"You know how a moth becomes a moth, right?" He asked.

Sara counted the four stages out on her fingers. "Egg, larva, cocoon, adult," she promptly supplied.

"Sounds simple, right?"

"Even the screaming second graders at the exhibit seemed to get that," Sara replied. "But why do I get the feeling that it isn't that simple?"

"From a scientific point of view, I suppose it is."

"But the gift wasn't about science though, was it?" She countered.

"No," he readily admitted. "But being a moth, isn't really about _being_ a moth, it's all about _becoming _a moth.

"A moth begins its life like most things," Grissom began in that even sort of tone Sara knew -- and liked -- all too well. "As an egg that is just waiting for its time to hatch. Waiting for just the right conditions of light and temperature and moisture and a million other factors only it knows about and only instinctively so.

"Then when it hatches from that egg, it doesn't hatch into a thing of beauty. If you didn't know what it was to become, you couldn't just look at a caterpillar and be able to say, _one day you will grow up to be beautiful, one day you will leave the earth and take wing and fly_.

"No, when a moth is just a caterpillar, it looks like a many-footed, hairy sort of worm really, hence the name _caterpillar_ – 'hairy cat.' Although I've never quite been able to get the connection between moth and butterfly larva and felids."

When Sara gave him that look that signified he was starting to ramble off topic, he pursed his lips in amusement and said, "But that doesn't really matter. The newly hatched larva has just one aim, one purpose to its existence -- well, two really -- to eat and eat and eat and eat -- and not get eaten.

"But as it eats, it grows and changes.

"People think that a moth's metamorphosis merely occurs when it is in its cocoon, but the reality of it is, a moth is constantly changing even when it is just a lowly caterpillar. It morphs from one instar -- one stage -- to the next and as it does, it must shed that part of its old self and become new again, remake itself over and over again, although subtly mind and not all at once.

"So, it must ingest and grow and molt until it's time -- not time to emerge beautiful and finished and complete. No, it's time for it to spin its microscopic threads and wrap itself up tight, cocoon itself from the outside world -- hide, disappear -- so that it can continue its process of becoming in privacy and safety.

"Once the cocoon is finished, for all its outward appearances, the moth looks dormant -- at rest -- peaceful even, but inside, inside it is all chaos and change and not just growing, but transforming. The little worm-like larva begins to grow wings, antenna -- all the parts it will need to posses to fulfill its destiny.

"It is a long process. For some, especially those that overwinter, even longer than all the munching that came before, and always longer than the life it lives when it finally emerges.

"You see, a moth is born not just once, but twice. But that second birth is the hardest, because it must struggle to break free from the walls that have for so long sheltered it. It must fight the cage of its own making, break free from the bonds it has itself created, only to arrive into the world damp and limp and vulnerable and not yet able to fly.

"For it takes time for the wings to unfurl and dry and stiffen, time to become ready to begin that tentative first feeble flutter that proceeds flight.

"But in the end, the moth must fly or it will die.

"It will die anyway and soon, but not before it has completed its one single purpose as an adult.

"Butterflies, well most of them, feed and flutter and pollinate flowers, but _Antheraea polyphemus_, like most moths, doesn't -- or even can't – eat.

"Instead, they are to find a mate, to search out others of their kind to couple and create. This stage of life, when the moth has finally become its true self, its adult self -- the imago -- is the briefest -- days, barely a week perhaps, before it has used up the last of its energy stores and dies.

"But why does that all matter?" He asked. "In your letter, you spoke about having spent almost your entire life with ghosts and that it had come time to bury them and I understood because I was a ghost..."

"That's what the guys had said you were in high school," Sara said softly.

Grissom shook his head. "Not just in high school." He tilted her chin up to peer into her eyes. "My whole life until I met you," he said, "I was a ghost."

Sara smiled slightly as she caressed his cheek fondly.

"But I have been a moth, too," he continued after placing a soft kiss into the center of her palm.

"I spent my youth devouring every bit of knowledge that I could, every fact, every story, every _thing_ that could be known and I grew like all children do, from lankiness to awkwardness. Learning was my sole drive -- not being -- not living in the warmth and light and the breeze and amongst the green -- no.

"But then the time came when it was time, when that final instar was complete and I began to spin the threads to cocoon myself away and somehow I knew to make it tight so it would keep the world out, so I would be safe to become away from prying eyes, private in my own awkwardness and fear, private in my changing and becoming. Private in that pain of change.

"Safe. Secure. Solitary. Still. It might have seem so from the outside all those years.

"But on the inside, I was writhing and struggling, fearful and uncertain, never quite sure of what I was to become, but unable to stop my becoming it.

"I spent a long time shut up in my cocoon, most of my adult life -- safe and snug, not daring to dream of possibilities.

"But one day, the time came to hatch that second time -- to break free of those confines I had created.

"In nature, that happens when the environmental conditions are just right, but for me, it was because I had begun to dream of those possibilities, of a life beyond the safe, cloistered existence I knew so well.

"It began when I began to dream of you.

"And even then it took me a long time to hatch -- to split those threads and struggle out and even with that done, I didn't know what to do and if I had, I couldn't have done anything as I couldn't fly on damp, deflated wings no matter how hard I tried.

"And you were so patient through all of this -- well, mostly patient," he qualified with a slight smile. "More patient than I know I deserved.

"But in the end though, I had to take that chance and risk falling in order to fly.

"Perhaps that is why they call it _falling in love_, because one must leap, leave the ground and in some ways take leave of their senses.

"So I fell a bit, only to find that I _could_ fly and eventually be free of all those things holding me back, that kept me so long in that cocoon.

"Then I was free to fly with you.

"It is apt I suppose, that moths come to love so late in life, when youth and middle age are over -- well youth, at least," he amended at the exasperated look on her face that she always seemed to get when he spoke about being or feeling old.

"Sara, I have loved you for so long, but I just could not let myself love or be loved completely -- wings and air and all, until late. And yes, I know that fifty is not old, no, but when it comes to finally loving and living and being it is. Or at least it seems that way.

"And sometimes, I feel the waste of all those years I stayed safe and sheltered. But I know, too, that I would not trade the years I have had and will have with you for anything, whether they be many, or like the moth's only days, and all too few.

"For while they have but that week to live, glorious as they are after all those weeks and months of becoming, what a week that must be -- alive like that, fully to all of life's possibilities.

"This -- these last few years, have been my week and they have been beyond belief. For I may have always had the possibilities of wings and flight, but you gave me the reason to risk flying, to risk being. You are the one that helped me break free from my cocoon to become --"

"Beautiful," Sara finished softly.

"To become who I was meant to be."

She took his face in her hands and sighed before gently brushing her lips against his, "Like I said before, once you understand it, the perfect gift."

Grissom smiled and happily returned the kiss.

_Series continued in "Going with the Living."_


End file.
